- Overload. The complexity that comes with scale robs employees of freedom and agility, stifles creativity, and drains the organization of momentum.
- Stall-out. Growth slows as operations become more complex and the sense of mission becomes diluted, and this stage arrives suddenly and without warning. A stall-out often leaves leadership teams struggling to understand why growth has slowed and how to regain momentum. There is also a growing sense of urgency as younger, faster competitors gain ground.
- Free fall. Growth in the core market comes to a complete halt, and the business model that worked until yesterday no longer works. The leadership team struggles to identify the strategic levers needed to reverse the decline; performance deteriorates rapidly, and the company reaches a point where a turnaround is extremely difficult.
Reviving the Founder’s Mentality to overcome organizational crises
Founder Mode can provide a practical leadership approach to reinforcing the three pillars of the Founder’s Mentality. By staying directly connected to employees and customers, communicating the company’s mission, and empowering individuals to act with ownership, leaders can help sustain an entrepreneurial culture as the organization grows. Founders, and leaders who know the company’s early days, engage directly with employees and instill insurgency, frontline obsession, and an owner’s mindset again and again.
The leadership of Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s former chairman, is a textbook example.
Even after transforming the company into a maker of high-quality products and raising its profile in global markets, he repeatedly told employees directly, “Our company is now facing the greatest crisis in its history.” This unrelenting sense of crisis, sometimes described as a “perpetual crisis,” was the driving force that sustained the company’s founder’s mentality and led it to become the world’s largest electronics company.